A practical treatise on the diseases of children / By Alfred Vogel ... Tr. and ed. by H. Raphael ... from the 4th German ed.

  • Vogel, Alfred, 1829-1890.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on the diseases of children / By Alfred Vogel ... Tr. and ed. by H. Raphael ... from the 4th German ed. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    frequent in children, as well as the occurrence of urinary calculi in childhood, has some connection with it. The skin, which during fostal life was continuously of the tem- perature of the maternal blood, with the act of delivery becomes a colder medium, for now it is subject to the impressions of the air, light, and changes of temperature, and also assumes the function of secretion. At birth it has a uniform red color, which, however, between the second and sixth day, changes to a yellowish and then into the ordinary rosy-red tint. The yellowish color is often errone- ously regarded as icteric. New-born children are covered almost all over the body, with the exception of the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, with fine, soft, often tolerably long hairs (lanugo), which fall out in the first weeks of life. So, too, the strong hairs upon the head with which children sometimes come into the world, fall out in the first weeks of life, and are only slowly replaced by a fine, gen- erally light-colored growth of hair. Feeble children, of slow de- velopment, and those devoid of solid adipose tissue, retain these first hairs much longer than those which develop rapidly. In the first weeks of life the sweat-glands perform their function but very imper- fectly ; it is almost impossible to bring a child, under four weeks old, into such a state of transpiration that the perspiration will gather in drops. On the other hand, from the beginning of the second month up to the end of the first year, the secretion of the sebaceous glands of the scalp in almost all children is increased in amount, forming sebor- rhea capillitii, which should be classed with the physiological conditions. This seborrhcea capillitii develops very gradually; at first, the scalp looks as if it had been smeared with tallow or cerate; upon this hard skin dust and dirt become adherent, and, with the lardaceous secretion of the skin, dry into grayish-white or yellowish and, subsequently, into brown and even black scabs, which crumble easily between the fingers, become detached, and leave the scalp in a healthy, uninjured state, and not even congested. It is not attend- ed by any itching, moisture, or cutaneous infiltration. By a diligent application of olive-oil, and washing the head with soap and water this formation of scabs may be arrested without any danger to health. In many places, in Munich for instance, the midwives have accused this affection of being a noli me tangere. It is but seldom possible to persuade the mothers to try the just-described method of treatment, most of them leaving the brown scabs untouched till the end of the first year, when the seborrhcea ceases spontane- ously, and the scabs, by the constant growth of the hair, are separated more and more from the scalp, and finally dry up and crumble